Venezuela is a beautiful country full of quirks and disorganisation. After our stressful trip to Puerto Ordaz we enjoyed Christmas day in Casa del Lobo. The owner, Wolfgang, is very hospitable and, after settling in, his wife made us Christmas lunch, which was "Hakari", a venezuelan speciality with chicken and veg steamed in a banana leaf. Wolfgang's wife seemed to have forgotten that Phant was vegetarian but as it was Christmas Day, and not wanting to waste food, he ate it.

The following day we set off on our 620km journey South to Santa Elena by taxi. Our driver was going at 160 kph at times, the car swerving whenever he threw some bit of rubbish out the window! He was also on his phone a lot; Venezuela clearly doesn't have a law against using a phone whilst driving (or it is not strictly enforced). The A/C was turned up to the max so we subtly opened our windows by the tiniest amount in order to let some warm air in. Around half way we stopped in a small town and had to switch cars. The new car was even colder but when Suhanya opened the window the driver came over to tell her to close it. However, when he got in the car he remarked how cold it was which made us laugh and he thankfully turned down the A/C. This guy seemed to drive pretty fast too but since his speedo was stuck at zero it was hard to tell! Along the rest of the way we saw no fewer than seven trees blown over on to the road which we had to drive around.

Santa Elena is a small town; we stayed there for one night and experienced a power cut while having dinner in the "best pizza place in town". The following day we started our Roraima trek which was definitely an amazing experience even though it was tough. The top of Mount Roraima is very different - like being on another planet.

Upon returning to Santa Elena from the trek we struggled to get a room but finally found one after three hours of searching. We booked our Angel falls trip and were meant to be getting a bus the next day at 4pm, however, the following morning we were eating our breakfast as one of the Kamadac agents came up to us and said: "The bus time has changed to 9am, it is leaving now!" We quickly finished our breakfast and paid; Suhanya went to collect the laundry while Phant packed the bags. At the laundry place they were really disorganised, didn't know which clothes were ours and had them in lots of different baskets. Luckily Suhanya realised her sleeping bag liner and Phant's towel were missing and insisted they find them before she left with the laundry, which was still sopping wet! After 10 minutes of searching they found them. We got straight in the taxi with four plastic bags full of wet clothes along with our other hastily packed bags. We went to the bus station and got on the bus. We waited around for a while which gave us time to sort our clothes a bit. We put our clothes line up and started hanging our clothes on it. We used our backpacks and ourselves as clotheslines too! The locals found it funny, amazingly, though, during the 11 hour bus journey we were able to dry all our clothes - roughly 10kg worth!

The next morning we made our way to Angel Falls. We boarded a 6 seater cesna and flew to Canaima national park. The scenery below was beautiful and the plane journey was quite gentle. After a smooth landing we got a flatbed to our accommodation. We had a boat trip along the river and saw seven waterfalls. We walked behind one of them and had a nice shoulder massage from the powerful cascading water. The next day we had a four hour boat journey up through the jungle to Angel Falls. The boat ride was bumpy at times, especially going through the rapids when it felt more like a water ride at a theme park: dodging the huge rocks and squeezing through small gaps between them. We docked and had an hour walk through the jungle to a viwing point of the falls which was cool. We then continued a little further and went to the bottom of the falls where we experienced a freezing cold but refreshing swim. That night we slept in hammocks before returning back.

One of the more amusing aspects of our time in Venezuela was finding out that there was a toilet roll shortage in the North! This explained why people were bringing a lot of it on our bus up from the south: it was presumably destined for the black market!